It was six years ago that USAF set up a new introductory flight training program, utilizing civilian flight schools to indoctrinate and screen those who wanted to be USAF pilots. (See our article “The Pre-Pilots Fly Again” from June 1999.) Now, USAF plans to recast IFT into a new shorter program taught at a centralized location—to be named—that will more resemble USAF-type training. The current IFT runs 50 hours, but Air Force Education and Training Command chopped that in half. The current civilian schools conducting IFT will use the new 25-hour AETC syllabus to screen pilot candidates—at least until the new program—dubbed initial flight screening—starts up in October 2006.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…